Expert named to lead new tropical disease research center

CAROL CHRISTIAN, Copyright 2011 Houston Chronicle |
June 8, 2011

An expert in tropical diseases will lead an elite team of researchers in establishing a unique center in Houston to study and develop vaccines for these afflictions, which affect millions of poor people worldwide.

Dr. Peter Hotez, who will join the staffs of Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine this summer, will serve as founding dean of a new, as yet unnamed, tropical disease research school at Baylor. It will be the only such institution in North or South America, said Hotez, who was in Houston for the announcement Wednesday.

The Sabin Institute's vaccine development operation, to be housed in the Feigen Center at Texas Children's, is beginning clinical trials on the world's first vaccine for hookworm disease.

If successful, the vaccine could become available within five to seven years, Hotez suggested.

Other vaccines are expected to follow, and the move to Houston will help speed that process, he said.

"This allows us to expand what we're doing," he said. "You have this incredible horsepower at the Texas Medical Center."

Hotez also praised Rice University's bioengineering department as "one of the best in the world."

The author of Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases: The Neglected Tropical Diseases and Their Impact on Global Health and Development,hesaid that while such diseases may sound remote, they already exist here in Houston but don't get much attention.

An estimated 300,000 Texans have Chagas disease, which is a major cause of heart disease and is associated with sudden death, mainly in adults, he said.

Such deaths can go unrecognized, Hotez said.

"Because so few doctors are trained to think about tropical diseases, most physicians or health care providers would erroneously conclude, 'Oh, that guy must have had a heart attack,' " he said.

'Ancient scourges'

Other examples are a parasitic brain infection known as cysticercosis, which Hotez described as the leading cause of epilepsy among Hispanic Americans, and toxocariasis, a parasitic infection causing developmental diseases that is endemic in Texas.

"These are diseases that are ancient scourges," he said. "You've heard of emerging infections like SARS? These are the opposite. People have called these the biblical diseases. We're finally going to take them on."